Exhibit opening tonight examines Jim Crow

Published 5:30 am, Thursday, August 4, 2011

Both rooted in racial hatred, Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws and the Jim Crow statutes of the American South shared chilling similarities. Stripping their victims of political, economic and social rights, they declared open season on perceived inferior races.

Yet, while events in Europe spun out of control, leading to the slaughter of millions, a renewed commitment to human rights in the United States slowly gained momentum.

The similarities, and differences, between the racist laws and practices in Nazi Germany and Jim Crow America will be examined in Racist Ideologies: Jim Crow and the Nuremberg Laws, which opens tonight at the Holocaust Museum Houston.

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The exhibit, on view through next July, will draw on examples of codified racism in the South, Texas and Houston. The opening will feature an address by former Texas Southern University law school dean Otis King, who in 1976 became Houston's first black city attorney.

"The Nazi lawmakers were aware of the Jim Crow laws," said Cynthia Capers, the museum's director of education and changing exhibitions.

Holocaust survivor

Beginning with the Nuremberg laws in 1933, German Jews were restricted in their residence, education, occupation and freedom to marry outside their community. Featured in the exhibit is comment from Houston Holocaust survivor Rachel Kern, who, at age 6, arrived at a public swimming pool to find dogs and Jews were barred.

Texas' Jim Crow laws mandated separate railroads and streetcars for blacks; separate waiting areas at depots; poll taxes to discourage voting; separate schools and libraries for blacks. In 1915, interracial marriage could bring both parties a five-year stint in prison. Twenty-nine other states had similar laws.

"The only essential difference between a Nazi mob hunting down Jews in Central Europe and an American mob burning black men at the stake in Mississippi is that one is actually encouraged by its national government and the other is merely tolerated," civil rights champion W.E.B. Dubois observed in a comment spotlighted at the exhibit.

Still, the racism of Germany and of America played out in vastly different ways. "We're asking the visitor to look at the material and truthfully think about the thought process," Capers said. "We aren't offering a definitive answer — we're saying, here's the thought process and beliefs and asking, 'What was the impact?' "

The end of World War II launched renewed, albeit incremental, dedication to achieving full human rights in America, she said.

"I think that as American soldiers encountered the concentration camps at the end of World War II, there was a strong sense of renewal about what you need to fight against," Capers said. "For African-American soldiers, in particular, there had always been a strong double goal: Fight against fascism but also fight Jim Crow at home."

Behind closed doors

Jim Crow's grip on Houston, she said, may have been milder than in other parts of the nation. "Our community leaders in the 1960s wanted to push Houston forward," Capers said. "In no way did they want to look like Birmingham, Alabama. So the African-American business leaders and the white establishment worked behind closed doors."

King, who came to Houston with his family from Texarkana in 1940, recalled a city marked by racial intolerance.

"There definitely were limitations upon blacks in Houston," he said. "Riding the bus, there was segregated seating. Being downtown, you wouldn't find a place to eat or use the bathroom other than black establishments. You rubbed up against those things a lot."

King, who was active in local civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s, said he believes American racial divisions are shrinking.

"Looking at five generations, from my grandparents to my grandchildren, things have changed for the better," he said. "My excitement over Barack Obama: I never thought I would see it in my lifetime, but I saw it happen. ... Seeing things in Egypt and the Middle East. The whole world is sort of changing."